


Na Via

by SadMageCentral



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Fade Demons, Fix-It, Gen, Hawke & Varric Tethras Friendship, Magic, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2020-03-20 06:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18987337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadMageCentral/pseuds/SadMageCentral
Summary: While Hawke and her Warden contact argue about who gets to stay in the Fade, the Inquisitor's Tevinter companions decide to take matters into their own hands.





	Na Via

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the Tevene proverb: Only the living [know victory]. While it is associated with Fenris, I thought it would be fitting for this scenario.

‘Let me do this, Champion,’ the Warden says, as his icy eyes bore intently into Hawke’s frowning face.

Their crinkled brows are almost mirroring one another. Except that his is paler, drained both by fighting through squelching inky nightmarish spawn and by the unnatural glow of the tilted sunless sky; and it has been clearly more marked by age.

'It will be a fitting way for me to go out. All things considered. I am certain Cailan will find it bloody hilarious, wherever he is’.

'No’.

Hawke’s throat contracts, as though a thorn has entered her flesh, light-brown out in the warm sun and sickly yellow in the rippling, swampy green light of the Fade.

Nostrils flaring, she stares down the man before her. Even if she were not a few inches taller than him already, she would still have towered above him out of sheer intensity of emotion that she puts into the next phrase. Curt, brief, and simple.

'Corypheus is my responsibility’.

An impasse. Neither will budge. Neither will let the other jump in front of the creature that blocks their path to the flickering, beckoning window of the Rift. A giant knot of spiky spidery limbs, each the length of a sturdy tree trunk, and of putrid growths, and of fleshy tentacles. A whole udder of them hanging from its underbelly.

The thing is slow as it is massive - but it will lash out soon. It will surely destroy the mortal ants should they attempt to race past it towards the Rift.

They are pressed for time.

 

Someone has to distract the creature. Someone. Either of the two. Warden or Champion. A tired old man with a trail of mistakes behind him, like a blood splatter on stone. Or a woman just reaching her prime, yet determined to do what’s right, even if that costs her her life, just as it once cost her her city.

In unison, the Warden’s grey eyes and the Champion’s hazel turn towards the Inquisitor. The choice, it seems, will fall to her. It always does. Always. And no - it does not get any easier, does it?

Hands digging deep into her sleek, elaborately done-up black hair, the elf stumbles back, almost knocking over Hawke’s dwarven friend, who has also become transfixed on her. 

He looks like a staring floating head bobbing silently at her waist level - for the rest of him has been obscured by the billows of heavy yellowish Fade mists. He must be expecting her to send the Warden to his death; to leave Hawke alone, at long last. To allow her to return to wherever it is she has been hiding…

Certainly not in the company of any disgraced ex-First Enchanters. Oh no.

No - that guy was definitely not romantically involved with Hawke. Much as the Seeker revelled in her conspiracy theory and the 'clues’ scattered around the book. And he is definitely not still alive. He turned into an abomination; a lumbering globe of rotting flesh, with a head that detached itself and skittered about like a scorpion! All the readers of the Tale know that.

But regardless. The dwarf wants to leave the Fade with Hawke - but the Inquisitor can’t just sentence the Warden to death either. She can’t. Can’t. Can’t.

Soft chubby fingers dig deeper into the raven strands. The elf bows her head, chest heaving.

She, too, has been dipped into the Fade’s permeating, sticky greenness - but the shade of her round cheeks might not just come from the eery lighting. There is a fresh wound slashed across her torso. A strike of the Nightmare Demon’s claws that she has not had time to heal, too busy sustaining barriers around all of her companions instead.

The creature might well have oozed some venom or ichor under her skin. She certainly looks like she is about to faint, unsteady on her feet and panting heavily, a ribbon of sweat glistening along her straining throat.

She is in no condition to make the choice that is expected of her. And the spider-like monstrosity will not wait until she gathers her strength - or will it?

While Hawke and the Warden argue, and the Inquisitor reels, and the dwarf looks on, concern slowly seeping through his features, two mages at the very back of the group exchange a long, meaningful look.

They are both Tevinter, and one of them - the older one, the more tired one, about just as old and tired as the Warden, with a similar trail of blood stretching behind him with every step - should not even be here.

He should be a headless skeleton at the bottom of a pit, cleaved apart by the swift slash of a kind headsman’s axe. Or a prisoner, locked away in a barren stone box, with nothing to rest his eyes on but the endless abyss in front of his bars. Or at best, an indentured researcher, shackled to his own desk, scribbling away as the vigilant guardsman’s hooded shadow falls across his parchment.

He should - but he is not.

The Inquisitor, just like the Hero of Ferelden before her, made a friend out of the man who tried to kill her (she made friends with several people who tried to kill her, in fact, to the best of her ability). And he has followed her this far, into this noxious pit where the nightmares dwell.

Every second that she spends, boiling from within with poison and helplessly struggling in the shadow of a grotesque colossus that is about to consume her - consume them all - seems to leave a deeper imprint on his weary face. He, like no-one else, knows what a precious thing time is.

And while the others are focused on who dies and who flees, he nods silently to the other Tevinter. The younger one, the braver one, the brighter one. Especially bright, especially hopeful, now that he has found a place to belong in the south. The latter nods back - and stretches out his hand, still without a word. Like he might have done years ago, when things were… Better.

Fingers linked together, foci of mana aligned to merge and multiply their reserves of power, they stand tall side by side, mentor and apprentice, two friends against all odds, through betrayal and disappointment and forgiveness, and cast the magic they have both been so good at. The magic that, in the hands of the older Tevinter, almost unraveled the world, and in the hands of the younger, pieced it back together.

The air condenses and cracks, like a layer of ice under a heavy boot. Its shards shift apart a little - and then freeze, perfectly still. The swirls of mist freeze as well, caught in the middle of changing shape. And most importantly, so does the gigantic spider. Its belly no longer heaves with a pulsing, malevolent life force, and its motions, however slow before, grind to a complete halt.

'Well then,’ the younger Tevinter declares, while beginning to usher the others towards the Rift, in a voice that he struggles to keep audible. He is almost out of breath, and his usually impeccable moustache is moistened by perspiration.

'This should hold… for a few seconds… Now we can all escape, with no bick… bickering. A genius solution, wouldn’t you say?’

'Truly,’ his mentor joins in, letting the Inquisitor lean against him and trying not to breathe too loudly through his mouth.

'The southerners would be utterly lost without us’.


End file.
